Personality Disorders in Clinical Practice
- Deconstructing misconceptions, professional biases, and stigma
- Prevalence and presentation
- Distinguishing between personality traits and personality disorders
- Co-occurring disorders, SUDs and suicidality
- Invalidating environments and their impact on PDs
- Exploring the link between attachment and personality disorders
- Neurobiology and personality disorders
- PDs across the lifepsan
- Risk and protective factors
Assessment Tools and Getting an Accurate Diagnosis
- Screening and assessment tools
- SCID-5
- Personality Disorder Interview-IV
- Standardized Assessment of Personality – Abbreviated Scale
- MMPI-2
- Critical factors for accurate diagnosis
- Personality disorder cluster characteristics and core features
- Avoiding misdiagnosis: surface and core structure
- Culture influence and personality disorders
- Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders
Evidence-Based Treatments for Personality Disorders: How CBT, DBT, Schema Therapy and More Fit into Your Treatment Plan
- CBT for healthier coping strategies and problem-solving skills
- DBT tools to regulate emotions and improve interpersonal relationships
- Schema Therapy: challenging maladaptive patterns and core beliefs
- MI, EMDR and other modalities
- Medications and personality disorders
- Integrating treatment approaches for each cluster
- Research, risks and limitations
- Indications and contraindications
Cluster A Personality Disorders: Clinical Interventions for Treating Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal Clients
- Empty chair techniques to help clients process anger
- DBT skills training for problem solving and assertiveness
- Exercises to help clients test their suspicions and question their thoughts
- Schema therapy techniques to help identify negative thoughts
- Group therapy to improve communication and interpersonal skills
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction as a mean of coping with stressors
- Overcoming transference reactions
Cluster B Personality Disorders: Best Practices for Treating Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic and Narcissistic Clients
- Interventions to increase sense of personal responsibility for conduct
- Working toward appropriate sharing of feelings and vulnerabilities
- Managing deceptiveness in therapy
- Exploring history of conflict with authority and themes of abandonment
- Safety plan for self-harming, suicidality and substance use
- CBT strategies to shift from catastrophizing thoughts
- DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills for aggressiveness
- Schema therapy for distorted thoughts of grandiosity and entitlement
- Overcoming transference reactions
Cluster C Disorders: Working with Avoidant, Obsessive-Compulsive and Dependent Clients
- Keys to forming a therapeutic alliance
- REBT to identify and replace distorted perceptions
- Role playing relevant social skills
- Identify, explore and process thoughts of shame
- Working with hypercritical schemas
- Exposure therapy to reduce perfectionism
- Assess for clients’ dependency patterns
- Activities that boost self-esteem and encourage independence
- Therapist countertransference
Maintaining Professional Boundaries: Decreasing Burnout and Practicing Self-Care
- Common signs of burnout
- Setting boundaries
- Professional Quality of Life Scale
- 5-minute self-care exercises